Shenglan Tang, director of the DKU Global Health Research Center and DGHI faculty member, provides commentary for the July issue of The Economist Intelligence Unit: Ancient enemy, modern imperative: A time for greater action against tuberculosis.
The report investigates the health challenge posed by tuberculosis (TB) and ways to improve the effectiveness of the global response to it. The findings of this report are based on extensive desk research and interviews with a range of public health officials, funders, academic and medical experts, researchers, and activists.
TB is the second-biggest single infectious killer -- after HIV/AIDS -- on earth, causing the death of 1.3m people in 2012. This toll -- two percent of global mortality -- continues despite a cure existing for nearly 70 years and heightened global efforts against TB going back two decades.
“Hospitals, which derive their income largely from pharmaceutical salesand diagnostic tests, tend to overprescribe more costly second-line anti-TB drugs even when there is no indication of drug resistance in order to extract greater revenue. They also frequently prescribe additional “liver protection pills”, for which there is little evidence of medical value in treating TB.”
In 2012, the World Health Organization indicates that 8.6 million people probably developed active cases of TB, but only around two-thirds were identified.
